Posts Tagged ‘Warrior’

I am at home off work today. My voice has dropped an octave (I have the sexy Barry White thing going on) and my throat glands are swollen; I need to be 100% tomorrow as work is full of appointments, so I am hoping today will do the trick. I have bought Warrior off iTunes and it is currently downloading, so Tom Hardy can soothe me this afternoon!

I said in my previous entry that I have lately been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve gone from being irritable to being insecure and I think that I have been suffering from hypersensitivity again, but it just feels like I can’t seem to do anything right. At work I still keep making minor mistakes that people seem to delight in pointing out; I am trying my best and I feel that I have learned a lot and that I do a good job, but apparently it just isn’t enough. I don’t know if my contract will get renewed in September at this rate… I really hope so, but I am just having a crisis of confidence. I guess that in March, I have my 6-month review and I can ask my boss frankly whether she already knows anything about the future of my role, and when I will find out whether I am staying on. I should be reassured by the fact that my boss seems keen for me to go to curriculum training events and for me to learn things that will serve me well in the future of the job; but I also seem to be living in the shadow of the person that I have replaced, and it’s been a hard job to get people to be genuinely nice to me. Some are just determined not to be; others have slowly begun to smile at me and get to know me a little. But it’s just so wearing, and I wonder what is wrong with me that I can’t be poised and charismatic as I usually am. I’ve never really had trouble making friends in the workplace. But my nerves are getting to me – we had a party on Friday night in Camden and I was trying to be friendly and introduce myself to some people I didn’t recognise, but because I felt like a deer caught in headlights, my opening salvo ended up being “Um, do you know who I am?” Now as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew that it sounded conceited – and I laughed and followed it with “Oh, that sounds awful!” – but it was too late because it is likely that every single thing that I say and do is monitored, recorded and gossiped about. If I sound paranoid, it’s only because I know that it happens with other people there… These people were staring at me like I was an alien, and it made me uncharacteristically nervous and clumsy.

And then, at Toby’s flat I managed to put the washing machine on a really long cycle by accident, and I inconvenienced other people in the flat. Now, the atmosphere there is already fraught with tension, but I didn’t want to be responsible for adding to that – especially as I don’t live there. I pay to do my laundry there, but I don’t want to cause any problems or become a burden to anyone. Again, making such basic mistakes is not like me. I apologised and explained it was a mistake, and I think everything ended up fine; but I know once again that this mistake can be stored up and can be used as ammunition later on. I just don’t understand why I’m feeling so awkward lately, and my awkwardness is compounded by my awareness that other people are constantly searching for a weakness, for something to use against me, and for something to boost their own egos. Now normally I wouldn’t care, but I need to keep this job and I need to be able to go and visit Toby’s flat to spend time with him.

This sense of malaise even made me misjudge the most basic of social situations; I was introduced to a couple of Toby’s family’s neighbours on Saturday evening. I went to shake hands, and it didn’t happen – a point was made and eventually my gesture was reciprocated, but it was kind of embarrassing by that point. My timing is off and my judgement is off, and however much Toby reassures me that I am fixating on miniscule details and that I shouldn’t worry, I just want to get away from everything, rest and recharge. I am not surprised that I have come down with a chest cold and sore throat, as it seems to be a physical manifestation of all the stress I have been under at the moment (although I was also admittedly ill-prepared for the cold Peterborough wind this weekend). Hopefully staying in bed today and taking it easy, my trip to Paris with Toby on Friday, and my week at home in Bristol next week will give me the relaxation I so desperately need (a big issue for me is learning exactly how to relax) and the positivity I need to snap out of this funk.